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Six Questions for Sidney Blumenthal, Author of The Strange Death of Republican America
by Scott Horton
 Sidney Blumenthal has written for The New Republic, the Washington Post, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and most recently served as Washington editor to Salon.com and as a contributor to The Guardian. He is one of America’s foremost political commentators, and also has a noteworthy track-record of political engagement. He served as an assistant and senior advisor to President Bill Clinton and is currently a senior advisor to Hillary Clinton. He was also executive producer for the Oscar Award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. Blumenthal has just published a collection of essays entitled The Strange Death of Republican America.
I put six questions to him on the subject of his current book.
1. You have modeled your book, at least to a degree, on George
Dangerfield’s The Strange Death of Liberal England, the 1935 classic of
modern political historiography that linked the demise of the Liberal
Party to dramatic external changes–the political ascendancy of trade
unionism, the civil war in Ireland, and so forth. But there’s a
difference, isn’t there? When Dangerfield wrote the Liberal Party
really was on the verge of extinction. But today you’re effectively
forecasting doom for the Republicans. Not only do the Republicans cling
to power in the Executive Branch, they have arguably succeeded in a
sweeping reallocation of power from the other branches to the
Executive. And they have greatly consolidated their control of the
Judicial branch. Only in the legislature have the Democrats staged a
comeback, and even there the margins are narrow and they rest on a
single election in 2006. Admittedly George W. Bush has emerged as the
most unpopular president of modern times, but America has developed a
very stable two-party system, and part of that stability comes from a
party’s rejection of its failed leaders. In the 2008 presidential race,
the Republicans rejected the two candidates who positioned themselves
as Bush’s heirs (Romney and Giuliani) in favor of John McCain, the man
who was Bush’s nemesis in 2000. Don’t the signs point to an internal
realignment within the G.O.P. that positions the party to hold on to
the only part of the government that seems to matter, the Executive?
Doesn’t that make your prognosis premature?
Sidney
Blumenthal, photo by Robert Goddyn (2006)My book’s title was inspired
by Dangerfield’s cogent history of the Liberal Party. Though published
in 1935, it covered the period from the end of the Boer War to the
beginning of World War I. We now regard that era as a time of illusion:
the Liberals’ belief in an upward spiral of progress armored their
blithe indifference to the social forces being unleashed within
England. If the Liberals suffered from arrogance it was stoked not by
fierce fires but rather by deeply settled complacency. Their inability
to recognize and respond to changing realities, despite their
assumption of progress, led to their undoing. The contrast between the
fall from grace of the English Liberals under Edwardian beneficence and
the American Republicans under Bush malfeasance could not be starker.
It is the difference between inertia and volatility. The Liberals did
not envision the inferno that lay ahead in world war while the
Republicans would not acknowledge the inferno they created after the
fact.
As I have reported and analyzed in The Strange Death of
Republican America and my preceding volume on the Bush presidency, How
Bush Rules–taken together offering a contemporaneous historical
record–Bush pursued the radicalization of Republicanism to its limits.
Politically, he has succeeded in discrediting the conservative
Republican project. His popularity is the lowest (and most extended)
for a president in modern times and the party brand has been
contaminated. Bush’s consequences make it impossible for a Republican
successor to embrace his legacy.
John McCain’s emergence is
testimony to the shattering of Bush’s presidency. Without the
fracturing of conservatism, McCain would never have become the
Republican nominee. It is not an accident, as the Marxists might say,
that McCain was Bush’s rival in 2000, a bitterly fought contest that
resulted in wounds that are still fresh to McCain. Regardless of
McCain’s need to consolidate and conciliate the Republican base–and
despite some Democrats’ insistence that McCain is little more than a
party line reactionary–he remains an utterly singular figure in the
individualistic tradition of Goldwater but lacking Goldwater’s early
(at least) extremism. Ironically, at the end of the current Republican
era, McCain is the last important Republican whose career stretches
back to the Reagan period–and even to the Nixon years as an icon of the
Vietnam War. McCain represents continuity and a break with it. His
reliance on neoconservatives for foreign policy advice is his most
important connection to the Bush legacy.
For McCain to win in
the Electoral College, of course, he would have to reassemble the
Republican coalition. But he might well have greater appeal and put
into play states that dropped out of the G.O.P. alliance under George
W. Bush, from New Jersey to California. If McCain did so the result
would not be a restoration of Reaganism, but the basis of a post-Bush
Republicanism.
2. Of course, before their rapid collapse, the
Liberals could lay claim to being the “natural party of government” in
Britain. If we had to look for a “natural party of government” in the
United States, it seems that the post-World War II choice would have to
fall to the Republicans. They have held the Executive Branch over the
long haul, and while espousing a “small government” viewpoint at least
since Goldwater, they have actually made the Executive stronger and
larger than ever before. Conversely, the Democrats have through this
period been the “natural party of legislature,” since they have
by-and-large controlled it. Isn’t there a disconnect between Democratic
Party notions about the role of government and the party’s own
historical experience? Most Democrats continue to hold to notions of a
powerful Executive Branch formed in the Kennedy-Johnson era, and they
seem willing accomplices to the dismantling of Congressional power and
authority, even though it would appear to run contrary to the long term
interests of the Democrats. Today there is a broad consensus in the
country that the allocation of powers has tilted dangerously in favor
of the Executive, yet adjustment of this imbalance hardly seems to
figure as an issue. Have the Democrats failed to protect their natural
power base?
Since the beginning of the Republican ascendancy,
with the downfall of Lyndon Johnson and resurrection of Richard Nixon,
the Democratic Party has held power for longer periods in the Congress
than the White House. Whatever the flaws and errors of the Democratic
presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the congressional Democrats
enormously intensified their difficulties. The congressional party in
effect waged war on the executive, constantly asserting narrow
interests over national agendas and demonstrating contempt for the
damage it inflicted on the political standing of the president. In
dealing with Carter, Congressional Democrats displayed that they had
learned almost nothing from the Nixon landslide of 1972 and the
gathering advantages of the Republicans, perhaps because it was
followed so swiftly by the Watergate scandal overthrowing him. By 1979,
the congressional Democrats considered Carter the enemy. Senator Edward
Kennedy’s candidacy was really mounted by the congressional Democrats
against an incumbent president of their own party. After all, they
reasoned, wouldn’t the congressional party always hold power even if
the president were to lose? And wouldn’t the congressional party be
even more influential operating with a Republican president? That very
condescension greeted Bill Clinton when he arrived in Washington in
1993. Certainly, he made many mistakes during his first two years in
offices, but the self-destructive parochialism of the congressional
party is not given its due in the wreckage of his universal health care
initiative and the rest of his program or in the subsequent political
disaster. The election of the first Republican Congress in 40 years was
as much a reaction against the arrogance of congressional Democratic
power as it was to the turmoil fostered by an ambitious Democratic
president who could not control the whirlwind.
Have the
congressional Democrats learned the lessons of the recent past or do
they resemble the Bourbons who famously learned nothing and forgot
nothing? There are currently no leaders in the Congress who have worked
constructively and consistently even for the period of one session as a
majority party with a strong Democratic president. The Carter years and
the Clinton years of 1995-96 were crucibles of fractious, oblivious and
self-destructive impulses. Many in the congressional party still harbor
resentments over Clinton’s political survival and his thriving
presidency after they lost in the 1994 debacle. Among the most
significant challenges for a new Democratic president would be managing
the congressional Democrats. Many of them would prefer a Democratic
president whom they could steer as their vessel, more like a prime
minister than a president. Some quietly would believe they could
coexist comfortably with a Republican president.
3. A lot of
your book focuses on Karl Rove, whom you consider the author of a
catastrophic Republican strategy, which is pushing the party towards
extinction. But Rove continues to win accolades in the press, and was
accepted immediately on his departure from the White House as a leading
pundit–indeed, the Telegraph just ranked him No. 1 in its ranking of
the most influential political pundits (you didn’t make the list, which
is what you get for writing for the Guardian). Rove seems unusually
flustered these days, but he continues to be viewed as the grand master
of Republican strategists. How do you explain this?
I look
forward to Karl Rove’s commentaries on Fox News and tune into Fox
specifically to hear what he has to say. Unlike most pundits on TV, he
understands his subject. Together with Michael Barone, who by far has
offered the most intelligent and knowledgeable analysis throughout the
2008 campaign, they are the two best analysts on television. However,
as Bush’s “architect” of an enduring political realignment, Rove was
more an adroit tactician than a masterful strategist. As I’ve written
in my book, he believed that he could replicate the Republican
dominance that he achieved in Texas on a national level. Operating on
slim majorities (or none, to begin with in 2000), he used the tragedy
of September 11 as the justification for a mandate that was never there
and was not provided for in the narrow victory in 2004. Rove’s
misguided effort to launch Bush’s second term with a wedge opening to
privatization of Social Security was quickly exposed for the political
foolishness that it was. Did Rove, a touted student of history, not pay
any attention to Reagan’s deal-making over Social Security? Of course,
in the Plame affair–“Wilson’s wife is fair game”–Rove’s actions were
traitorous, even if he escaped indictment for perjury. His manipulation
of the U.S. attorneys for partisan purposes, part of his overarching
scheme to forge a one-party state, was at best abusive. In the
meantime, amidst the vast wasteland of blustery talking heads, he’s one
of the few bright spots.
4. In your analysis of the
transformation of the electorate that brought the Democrats victory in
2006, you focus on the youth vote and note its sharp trajectory into
the Democratic camp. Do you consider this to be a stable pillar on
which to build a new Democratic majority? Young voters are not only
less inclined to actually vote than other age groups, they are also
famously fickle in their political attitudes. Isn’t it in fact only
natural that a carefree college student will embrace liberal attitudes
from which a later white-collar worker with a mortgage and children may
turn?
The younger generation, responding to Bush’s radicalism,
is emerging as a liberal one. Its development may be part of a natural
cycle as the children of a liberal generation, just as their parents
were children of the New Deal generation. Bush has been the formative
experience in their political education. Yet the idea that the entrance
of a new generation of young people will suddenly transform American
politics is by now among the oldest, most romantic and least persuasive
notions of so-called “new politics.” Proposed in the aftermath of the
1968 election, many Democrats pinned their hopes on the youth vote.
That generation, my own, was and still is the largest numerically and
proportionally in American history. Rather than try to analyze the
internal reasons why the Democratic Party had come apart in the late
1960s, theorists suggested that a new generation would rescue the
Democrats as a political deus ex machina. In a 1971 book, Changing
Sources of Power: American Politics in the 1970s, Frederick G. Dutton,
a former aide to Robert F. Kennedy, wrote: “Voter turnout increases
with education, affluence, political awareness and social influence,
and those attributes are all demonstrably higher in the coming
generation than in any other new voting group in history.” This idea
was one of the key underlying assumptions of the George McGovern
candidacy in 1972. (McGovern, alas, lost 49 states.) A 1970 book, The
New Majority, by Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg, describing the
Republican sources of power as the “unyoung, unpoor and unblack” proved
more prescient.
Voters under 30 during this campaign year have
had a greater impact within Democratic primaries in terms of numbers
and influence than they will in the general election. The Pew poll of
May 8 now shows a growing generation gap, though “modest by the
standards of the 1960s.” Yet a majority of those over 50 years old,
according to Pew, do not share younger voters’ view, for example, of
Barack Obama as “inspiring” or even as “patriotic.”
The “new
politics” promising a youth-led renaissance, the transcendence of
partisanship and the withering away of social need through the greening
of America ended in tears 35 years ago. It’s a dream that apparently
defies its repeated deaths.
5. I submit that historians will
look on the Bush presidency as something unique in American history for
several reasons, but one will be the extraordinarily powerful role
played by his highly secretive Vice President, Dick Cheney. In fact,
hasn’t it been something of a shogunate, in which the president remains
the titular chief of government and is showcased, but the reclusive
Cheney has called the shots on the matters of interest to
him–especially national security and defense matters? Most importantly,
however, Cheney has shown that he can wield all these extraordinary
powers and avoid accountability for them. How does a new president cope
with the Cheney legacy of secret government? Won’t there be a strong
inclination to take advantage of it?
While Cheney has been the
prime mover of Bush’s imperial presidency, the legacy isn’t attached to
the vice presidency as an institution. Cheney’s handiwork permeates the
whole Bush Administration. Overcoming it will be the Herculean task of
the next president. Cheney’s great strength was his intricate knowledge
of, and experience in, the executive branch, beginning as deputy to
Donald Rumsfeld in the Nixon White House. Cheney has understood the
importance of controlling the bureaucracy, intelligence, and the flow
of information to the president, especially if he happens to be
uninformed about how things work and relies on advisers. Unraveling
Cheney’s work will require close knowledge of the executive and the
most careful handling, given the traps that Cheney & Co.
undoubtedly have laid for a successor.
6. You have written
frequently about Bush’s “war on the professions,” and indeed the
Administration’s struggle with lawyers, scientists, military officers
is a theme that runs through many of the pieces in this book. Is it
fair to say that the Administration succeeded in its war? Does this not
point to an ineffective Congress and a lack of whistleblower
protections? How does a new administration deal with this?
My
last point applies here. Bush, Cheney, et al. sought to create an
unaccountable and unfettered executive. In order to do that they kept
the Congress under their heel (when Republican) and at bay (when
Democratic), as well as exploiting and intimidating a craven and
status-driven national press corps. Following the dictum that people
are policy, Bush & Co. used the power of presidential appointment
to fill the administration with more than loyal Republicans. Bush built
a regime, not just an administration. For example, the appointments of
Federalist Society lawyers from the commanding heights of the
Department of Justice to counsel offices of every department and agency
was intended to install cadres of a new ideological clerisy.
Professional standards have been construed as mere instrumentalities of
conscious “liberal’ ideology, a counterpoint and obstacle to power.
Cherry-picking information to support a priori political conclusions
has pervaded government methodology from intelligence on weapons of
mass destruction to climate change.
Once again, a new government
would have to have extensive understanding of the federal apparatus in
order to reconstruct it. The Congress cannot do the job, even if it
conducted the most far-reaching investigative hearings and maintained
diligent oversight. Only a president can truly fix the executive
branch. The Bush model of a president who casts himself as a big
picture man, while dependent on advisers for working the actual
machinery, inevitably leads to a president who would soon find himself
in control of neither.
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